Working hard to make sense of it all

As I work on cultivating professional relationships on Twitter, one thing is apparent, there are some awesome teachers doing incredible things out there.

Case in point: last Friday, I took part in a “flipped” classroom activity with Jeff Bradbury (@Teachercast) and his music students. I love music, played in band in high school, sang in both high school and college choir, but know nothing of music theory. What do you know, Mr. Bradbury’s class taught me some! I audio Skyped into his classroom, had three awesome presenters, and used http://www.todaysmeet.com to chat with the students as well. Those who were presenting did a great job of answering my questions, and those on the chat kept me up to date on who was presenting, the main topics, then posted links to those topics for me (and those in the class) as well. His high school theory class is to commended for being flexible enough to allow a fifth grade teacher Iowa in to participate with them.

As for how this can be applied to my own room? Let me count the ways! 🙂 I’ve always been a little leery of doing Skype events, just the control freak in me I suppose, but this went smashingly well. The kids were great, the technology work well, and everyone was engaged in what was going on. As we continue down this road of flipping classrooms, allowing for the backchannel discussions of what’s going on in front of us, this type of learning will only become more and more common. Teachers like Mr. Bradbury will be the leaders of this field, pushing us out of our comfort zones, and into new places, scary, yet worth while.

I’ll be seeing how I can flip my classroom soon enough.

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Darin Johnston

Just a guy from Iowa, who's suddenly found himself at a place in life he never expected to be 20 years ago! I live on an acreage with my wife, two daughters, two dogs, seven cats, chickens, two cows, and quarter acre garden.
Find me at my blog: Life of a Conflicted Teacher
https://iowaconflictedteacher.com/

With what you are thinking of, you could use a web site called Screencast-o-matic (http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/). This lets you record whatever is on the screen along with your voice, so if you were using a Powerpoint, you could record the slides and your directions too. It’s very easy and sounds perfect for what you’d want to do!

Mama, Coach's wife, Teacher of middle schoolers. I value moments and believe that the small things really are the BIG things. My thoughts run deep. Life is a mess- a cozy, uncomfortable mess. But it's mine, and only I can make it happy.

Three high school English teachers share ideas, hopes, questions, fears, struggles, insights, and successes during their journey to transform their classrooms, their teaching, and their students through rigorous independent reading and writing.